Peru!

I am arrived. I had the worst airplane food ever, courtesy Copa Airlines, I visited the Panamanian airport, trekked across an endless airport parking lot in Lima following the guy who purported to be my ride to the hostel (he was, after all), I wandered the fancy limeño neighborhood of Miraflores in which I am staying, returned to the hostel, made friends with a Dutch girl traveling solo, ate dinner at a crappy Italian place with said Dutch girl (no wooden shoes, folks), and then returned to my hostel, took a surprisingly pleasant hostel shower, and then stubbed my toe so hart it broke the skin!

Anyway, now I am going to read my book and prepare for bed. Upon awaking tomorrow, Veronica and Margaret will be arrived to my hostel and I will hopefully convince them to go to a chifa with me, which is a Peruvian Chinese restaurant!

So much for daily updates.

Tomorrow I leave for Peru.

I got some Cipro, just in case...

meat.

Bill's mom sent him some Omaha Steaks for his birthday. We documented their consumption.

Now I present that documentation for your consumption.

Bad Pizza Tragedy

Sorry, no pictures today. I spent way, way too much time working today and I am tired.

As a result of all the work (!!) I did, I was lacking in the energy needed for cooking and so Bill & I walked the block or so to the new neighborhood pizza joint. Which sucked. A lot.

I'm definitely an "if you put cheese on it, I'll come" sort of girl (heh), and I'm afraid this pizza just couldn't make it happen.

Too bad, because I have been excited about it for months and months. Sigh. At least I have Tokyo 7-7.

Friday Brunch!

I ate this.
Ginger beef, rice, two eggs over easy. The diner is too awesome to describe further. Suffice it to say, it's in an alley and breakfast starts at $2.35. Oh yeah, and it's less than two blocks from my apartment. Does this make me cooler than you? The answer to that is yes--unless you are in one of the few apartments closer.

Pancetta, grape tomatoes, onion.

Saute, add pasta, top with grated pecorino romano, eat, rejoice.

As you no doubt noticed, I totally slacked on my updating as I had a friend in town over the weekend and we were busy eating out and drinking. To make up for my bad behavior, I will draw you a picture of a meal I ate, for each day that I missed.

On Thursday, we had Ethiopian food and it was delicious! However, I have decided that from here on out, I will stop ordering the honey beer, as I do not like it.

Here is what our dinner looked like. We ate with our hands.

Oy, shameful, I have skipped yet another day.

I often thought about blogging, though, so it isn't as though it slipped my mind completely. I just got distracted: my job, laundry, grocery shopping, watching Undeclared on DVD.

Ah, but I did go grocery shopping yesterday, after preparing dinner with what needed to be eaten, stat. We had some British-style bacon from Fresh & Easy (a huge disappointment, by the way, with some pieces cut 2 to 3 times thinner than others), an avocado, a tomato. So, bacon, avocado, tomato & cheddar sandwiches it was for dinner.

And then, to my quarterly pasta & bulk buying trip to Whole Foods. I still love Whole Foods, but I live in walking distance to Trader Joe's & Albertson's, and there's a farmers' market on my street. It seems silly to drive to the market when I don't have to. But, there are certain things worth making the trip for: their whole wheat organic pasta, their bulk brown short-grain rice at the merest 89¢ a pound, their bulk orzo (no bargain, really, at $2.99/lb), some impulsively bought olives, beer, of course.

Fast Food, part I

While I have many junk food pleasures, fast food is not one of them. I admit a deep love for Chipotle but otherwise find little allure in fast food. The result being I have not eaten, ever, at many iconic restaurants. Here's my list of ubiquitous or iconic fast food establishments I have never visited:

• Checkers/Rally's Drive-In
• Chick-fil-A
• Del Taco
• El Pollo Loco
• Fatburger
• Five Guys
• Hot Dog on a Stick
• Jack in the Box
• L&L Hawaiian BBQ
• Long John Silver's
• Noodles and Co
• Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits
• Shakey's Pizza
• I've been in Taco Bell, but I've never ordered food there. This is perhaps the most shocking, but shouldn't be, given that I didn't like Mexican food until age 20 or so, after I stopped smoking pot with any regularity.
• Togo's
• Whataburger
• Wienerschnitzel

Anyway, this is my fast food list. I think a lot of the places on my list aren't found much in the Midwest, which is the primary reason I've never been there.

Hot Dog!

Many, many years ago I decided I hated hot dogs. In fact, I don't know when I last had a hot dog. If I had to guess, I'd say 20+ years ago.

My neighbor growing up ate frozen hot dogs like popsicles, which might explain why I found them so repulsive, as that is truly disgusting.

Anyway, yesterday I ate two hot dogs and I really liked them! Who knew?

Boring!

Well, this NaBloPoMo business has so far been really tedious--I am boring myself, so I'm sorry for any additional boredom I am passing on to you. I don't want to write in my blog every day, even if it is about my favorite thing, food. Especially today, post-4th of July drinking and eating and more eating. And, after a lazy day of sleeping, eating leftovers, shopping, and then sleeping some more, I am about to head out for some more excess.

So, I leave you with a picture of Bill eating, which I have decided I will do whenever I have nothing I really want to say.


Below: Bill eats carne asada fries at La Playa Taco Shop in San Diego, 6/29/08.

Overeating, overindulging, etc.

Yes. I did all of the above on the Fourth of July. And the only fireworks I saw were on the TV, which was fine. After all the food was laid out on the table, one of our companions said "take that, Hugo Chavez." Indeed, we are a wealthy land.

Popcorn, Helvetica

Well, today I got to watch the documentary Helvetica at work with a bunch of design & production people. They thought it was pretty funny, and I must say, I enjoyed the movie and especially enjoyed the watching a movie during work.

Someone made a bag of Newman's Own microwave popcorn.

If you didn't know this about me already, I will tell you: I love popcorn. I wouldn't say I need to eat it daily, but I definitely need to eat it weekly. And popcorn at the movie theater is mandatory, even if I have previously deemed it sub-par.

I was pretty alarmed last year when that microwave popcorn/lung disease story broke, and, anyway, since I tend to be pretty concerned with eating minimally processed foods, I finally made the move to get a stovetop popper (and by "made the move" I mean "asked my mom to get me one for my birthday") last fall.

So, now I pop my organic popping corn in bulk from Whole Foods, pop it canola oil and drizzle melted butter on my popped corn. And I wouldn't be lying if I said that it was basically the best tasting thing in the whole world. Still, I can't resist crummy microwaved popcorn so I indulged at the meeting... err, movie-watching. And it was kind of gross, but I kept eating it.

Also, Bill has officially turned into a popcorn hater. I guess there is only so much love for popcorn a couple can have, and I hog it all. Sigh.

bacon

Well, today I spent a lot of time thinking about bacon, and things I could wrap in bacon. I mainly blame the picture that keeps popping up on facebook ("6 of your friends have become fans of Bacon" and so on. Really, what's wrong with my other 215 friends??), here:

Also, I have two BBQs to attend this weekend, and I should bring food to both of them. So, I considered what I could bring that would be wrapped in bacon for most of my day at work. Temporary reprieve came at lunch, at which time I ordered the BLT.

I gave up, by the way. Unless a stroke of genius hits, I'll be bacon-less for the weekend. Which isn't entirely true, as I finally got to one of the new Fresh & Easy markets (Tesco's US expansion), and bought British-style rashers, which I will almost certainly eat this weekend. And actually, I think I will make hash browns and rashers for breakfast on the 4th. No, the two are not generally considered complementary, but I just happen to have applesauce and sour cream that needs to be eaten. And no, hash browns are not precisely the same at latkes but I think they will do just fine.

Food, NaBloPoMo

Well, I am trying something different, something not particularly like me. I am going to try this NaBloPoMo thing in which I agree to update my blog daily on a certain theme. I am copying my friend City Elf.

This month's theme is Food, which has long since been a source of nourishment for me (ha!), but is also amongst my primary hobbies and joys (exhibit a: my, err, abundance). So, from this day forward (through July 31st, that is), I will share with you my thoughts on things tangentially related to food.

And on that note, I will direct you to the blog of my younger (but taller) brother, who has recently arrived in Argentina for a junior year abroad. He is apparently being starved by his host mother. I encourage you to read it and feed his fragile male ego.